Alien creatures destroy homes? Start by killing upright apes!

Chapter 18 Exponential Acceleration

The Minister of Works squatted down beside him, speaking in a low voice:

"To ensure they can be put back together, they marked the position and order of each part when they were disassembled, so that there wouldn't be any mistakes when putting them back together."

Li turned to look at the Minister of Works:

"You mean, they planned to put them back together before they were even taken apart?"

"Yes, they see disassembly and assembly as the same thing—learning. They take something apart, then put it back together, and in the process, they understand the structure and principles of that thing."

Li stood up and patted the dirt off his knees.

"After they've learned how to learn from the bronze lion, what will they learn next?"

The Minister of Works hesitated for a moment: "The steam boiler room in the royal palace."

Li turned and left, shouting, "Lock up the boiler room! Send a whole company to guard it!"

"Mr. President, it's locked, but..." The Minister of Works' voice trailed off.

"This morning we discovered that the boiler room door lock had been opened—not pried open, but disassembled. The lock springs, lock cylinders, and lock cases were neatly arranged at the doorway. The upright apes inside the boiler room had disassembled half of the boiler, and when they saw our people come in, they stopped what they were doing and quietly lined up to leave."

"They didn't resist?"

"No, they just glanced at us."

"What kind of look is that?"

The Minister of Works remained silent for a long time before finding the right words:

"Like a teacher looking at a student, thinking the student is too stupid, but too lazy to say anything."

A chill ran down Li's spine.

That afternoon, South Korea declared a nationwide state of emergency.

It wasn't announced to the general public, but to the military.

Three infantry regiments stationed in Seoul were secretly transferred to the outskirts of the area where the upright apes gathered, and machine gun positions were constructed overnight.

But Li issued a strange order—no one was allowed to fire without his personal authorization.

"Why?" the Minister of War asked.

Li repeated what Lu Cheng had said at the meeting: "The faster you kill them, the faster they evolve."

The Minister of War retorted, "So we're just going to do nothing?"

"Do it! But not with a gun."

He sent people to the Kingdom of Winners.

……

Ivan Bear Country, outside Kutsk.

Fra stood on a hill, with the entire city in front of her.

Kutsk, the country's largest steam engine manufacturing base, has twelve factories lined up along the riverbank, their chimneys belching black smoke day and night.

To the north of the city lies a vast birch forest, and to the south, an open grassland.

Now, the edge of the birch forest to the north is filled with upright apes.

Not a few hundred, not a few thousand.

There are hundreds of thousands of them.

The migrating caravan, which started from the Far Eastern wilderness, traveled more than a thousand kilometers, constantly converging along the way, and finally stopped at the edge of the birch forest north of Kutsk.

They didn't go into the city, nor did they approach the factories; they simply squatted in the woods, watching the city's chimneys with their clear black and white eyes.

"What are they looking at?" Fra asked.

The intelligence chief lowered his binoculars:

"The chimneys, they kept looking at the chimneys. Our people observed them for three days, and the upright apes' gaze remained fixed on the factory chimneys."

"What's so interesting about chimneys?"

"Smoke coming out of the chimneys means the factory is operating; they are monitoring the factory's operating rhythm."

Fula lit his pipe and took a puff.

The smoke was blown away by the wind and drifted towards the birch forest.

When will they enter the city?

"I don't know, they're just squatting there watching. They've been like this for three days, without moving an inch."

Fula remained silent for a long time, then said something that sent chills down the spines of everyone in his entourage.

"They are waiting."

"What are you waiting for?"

"Wait for the factory to close."

The intelligence chief was stunned: "Why wait until after get off work?"

Fula exhaled a puff of smoke: "After get off work, there's nobody in the factory, nobody's around, so they can go in and dismantle it."

At 6 p.m. that day, the whistles of twelve factories in Kutsk sounded simultaneously, and workers poured out of the workshops and walked back to the city along the riverbank avenue.

The upright monkeys at the edge of the birch forest remained still.

At seven o'clock, the sky began to darken.

At eight o'clock, night fell.

At nine o'clock, the last batch of workers left the factory area.

At 9:07, the first upright ape emerged from the birch forest.

At 9:12, the upright monkeys at the edge of the birch forest surged toward the factory area like a black tide.

No sound.

Hundreds of thousands of upright apes walked barefoot on the soil, making almost no sound.

They bypassed the guardhouse, climbed over the wall, and slipped into the workshop through the window.

At 9:30, the first steam engine was disassembled.

Fra stood on the hill, watching everything through her binoculars.

His pipe went out; it wasn't lit.

The intelligence chief behind me was trembling, not because he was cold.

"Comrade Chairman, should we order the army—"

"No need," Fra interrupted him. "If we go in now, they'll become radicalized and we'll let them tear it down."

"But those steam engines..."

"Steam engines can be rebuilt, but if they are radicalized, we won't even have the chance to rebuild them."

Fra put down her binoculars and turned to walk towards the steam snowmobile at the foot of the hill.

He took a few steps and then stopped.

"After they're disassembled tomorrow morning, send someone in to take pictures and archive the arrangement of all the parts."

"What's the use of saving data?"

Fula glanced back at him.

"Learning. They learn from us, and we learn from them."

……

The Winners' Kingdom, the government.

In front of Lu Cheng were three boxes of observation data on upright apes sent by Taro Tanuki Country.

He had been watching for four hours, and Carrie had come in three times to change the tea, but he hadn't drunk a drop.

"What did you see?" Carrie asked softly.

Lu Cheng raised his head, his eyes bloodshot, but his gaze was surprisingly bright.

"Evolution has accelerated! From the first day to the seventh day after their arrival, the evolutionary rate of the upright apes was linear. From the seventh day to the twelfth day, the rate doubled. From the twelfth day until now—"

He pulled out a graph he had drawn himself, the line of which rose sharply from the twelfth day onwards, almost becoming vertical.

"Exponential acceleration! Their learning ability isn't fixed; it gets faster and faster as they learn. It took them three days to learn the first tool, one day for the second, and half a day for the third. Now, they can disassemble a steam engine in just a few hours."

Carrie stared at the steep curve, her fingers unconsciously clenching the hem of her dress.

"How much longer can it accelerate?"

"I don't know. But if this trend continues—" Lu Cheng's finger traced the curve upwards, reaching the edge of the drawing and then the blank space.

"Within thirty days, their learning speed will surpass that of humans."

What does "surpassing humans" mean?

"This means that knowledge that would take humans ten years to master could be acquired in a single day, or even less."

Carrie fell silent.

The sound of a water dragon digging a hole came from outside the window, muffled, like distant thunder.

That was a reassuring sound, because it meant that the underground fortress of the Winner Monkey Kingdom was extending meter by meter.

But at this moment, that sense of security was shattered by that steep curve.

"The intelligence gathering from various countries is becoming increasingly concentrated," Carrie changed the subject.

"Prime Minister Robert of Australia made a phone call personally, South Korea sent a special envoy, and India sent three urgent telegrams. Although the four major powers don't say it, their intelligence agents have practically turned our government into a sieve."